


Tempor

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 1.01, Angst, F/M, Friendship, Happy Ending, Romance, coma fic, pilot, reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10024196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: 1.01.  "Auditory function is the last to deteriorate."  Barry is in a coma for nine months; these are his thoughts.





	

**Author's Note:**

> FORMAT: DAY:HOUR:MIN, e.g. 01:10:45 1 day, 10 hours, 45 minutes, or the 2nd day at 10:45 AM. Enjoy!

00:00:45.

 

_Why can’t I move?_

_Did I break my neck?  Wiggle your toes.  No?  Why can’t I move?_

_I thought death was supposed to be quick._

00:01:12.

 

_It’s so quiet here.  Quiet enough that I can hear Iris crying._

_Iris, what’s wrong?_

00:02:30.

 

_Iris is gone._

_I miss her already._

00:04:52.

 

_It’s late.  Joe should be asleep.  He’s talking to me instead.  “You’re gonna be all right,” he says._

_He’s crying.  I can’t see it, but I can hear it._

_I wanna be all right, Joe._

00:09:39.

 

_They’re starting to think I might never wake up._

_I’ve never been this scared._

 

00:11:47.

 

_People pay a lot of money to float in sensory deprivation tanks.  Like acupuncture: scary on the surface, super Zen underneath.  I’ve never tried it, and I can still feel, but I can’t respond to anything.  I try to move my hands, to scrunch up my face, to make a sound, but nothing happens.  Someone replaces an IV; I only notice because Joe wakes up.  It doesn’t hurt.  Maybe it should._

_Maybe I’m just too far gone to feel it anymore._

00:14:22.

 

_As of right now, my dying words are, ‘Bye, Felicity.’_

00:20:01.

 

_There is no sense of time.  It could be morning, it could be night, but I am here, and here is stuck interminably at zero._

_Until I regain control, I’m here forever._

 

01:04:36.

 

_Forever is a fucking long time._

 

03:00:14.

 

_Someone says “three days” and my blood runs cold._

_That’s scientifically impossible – even cold-blooded animals are warm, they’re just dependent on their surroundings for that warmth – but falling asleep forever seemed impossible yesterday._

_Scratch that.  “Three days ago.”_

04:10:20.

_Is it possible to die of boredom?_

 

04:22:07.

 

_Iris West is a good person._

_She seems to understand my struggle, because she reads aloud a journalism paper this time, and it’s drop-dead boring, and I love her for it._

05:00:12.

 

_She’s asleep right next to me and I can’t even feel it._

_I want to._

12:08:56.

 

_Doze, and I’m being told it’s Sunday._

_Already?  They say I got here on Tuesday.  I don’t know which one.  Maybe a week ago.  Maybe ten years._

_If I could just open my eyes, the passage of time would make more sense._

12:12:04.

 

_A lot of blind people have sleeping disorders.  Their circadian rhythms aren’t synced with their environment: they receive no visual reminders to stay awake or go to sleep._

_I can’t see a thing, yet I feel like I could sleep for centuries._

16:03:43.

 

_Maybe I already have._

 

19:20:45.

 

_Time seesaws here.  It slides backwards before lunging forward, projecting back to “before” and fantasizing about “after.”  Whenever Iris or Joe mentions the date I flinch, but the movement doesn’t register beyond my own mind.  Nothing registers._

_It’s like wearing a spacesuit, trying to communicate with a crew locked behind a soundproof door.  Nothing wants to work right._

21:23:57.

 

_And absolutely no one can hear me._

30:19:01.

 

 _Sometimes I wish_ I _couldn’t hear me.  Iris provides frequent intermissions.  They help.  There are strangers here, too, people I’ve never met before._

_There have been a lot of strangers lately, but it’s getting quieter._

33:02:45.

 

_And quieter._

 

37:18:02.

 

_And quieter._

 

42:01:39.

 

_‘Thawne’ is a familiar name to me, like an exotic fruit or third-grade teacher.  I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it._

_I can’t see ‘Thawne,’ and I can’t put a face to a name, and it quickly disappears.  Iris’ introduction glides hydrophobically over my back._

45:05:31.

 

_I dream about the strangest people talking to me.  I know they’re dreams because Dr. Wells would never spare a moment of his time for a CSI who died – and this I know, I must be; why else would I be this stuck?_

_I didn’t know you could dream when you were dead, but I also didn’t realize ‘dead’ was this disruptive._

_I miss being alive._

47:19:24.

 

_Coffee.  Rain.  The beach.  My stash of paperclips.  Joe singing when he thinks no one is listening.  Iris’ perfume.  The sound of thunder closing in.  A comfy chair that sinks when I sit in it.  The crackle of a fresh newspaper.  Riding a bike.  A mown lawn.  Bowling a strike.  Eclipses.  Running until my lungs hurt.  A worn-out, comfortable tee.  A call from my mom.  The precinct at four AM._

48:04:00.

 

_Four AM is an emotion, not a time._

_It’s eye-stinging fatigue and stumbling exhaustion.  A place in time where there are a lot of empty spaces.  No traffic, no congestion.  Even the streetlights sag._

_I’ve only been at the precinct this early once.  I didn’t want to remember it then._

_I miss it now, because as awful as that night was, Joe taking me home was one of the best things that ever happened to me._

60:20:03.

 

_I was gone for a long time._

_I know this because Iris picks up a conversational thread that unravels beautifully and utterly mysteriously before me.  I’m starting to fall behind._

_It sinks like a stone in my stomach.  I’m starting to fall behind…_

72:19:23.

 

_How long must I haunt my family?  Haven’t they suffered enough?_

_Or is death really this hollow, this vague, this disquieting place in-between?_

80:15:17.

 

_Every college kid who has taken a philosophy course has come across it.  “Plato’s allegory of the cave.”_

_Imagine spending your entire life, chained up with nothing to look at but a blank wall.  The one thing to keep you from going crazy are the shadows that pass on it.  They become your whole world._

_You never get to see the people and animals and things that create them, just their reflections.  You miss out on a lot._

_I really hate this cave._

98:00:01.

 

_Happy birthday, Joe._

_I’m sorry I couldn’t wake up for it._

101:00:10.

 

_I’ve tried everything._

_Clicking, whistling, snapping my fingers.  Gibberish, Shakespeare, sotto voce.  Every Dr. Seuss rhyme I can think of, like one holds the answer to breaking the silence.  I yell until my lungs are sore._

_My body doesn’t even twitch._

101:23:02.

 

_You’re off to great places!_

_Today is your day!_

_Your mountain is waiting_

_Go get on your way!_

102:01:04.

 

_Damn._

118:21:46.

 

_Hair stops growing after death, so my dreams of growing a long white Gandalfian beard are promptly quashed by the laws of biology, but I like to dream that I will wake up stronger._

124:10:28.

 

_Happy four-month anniversary._

_Time is an illusion._

143:02:45.

 

_I should have learned how to play the fiddle.  Legend has it that you can duel the devil and acquire one wish if you beat him at it._

143:23:18.

_Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon._

144:01:16.

 

_It’s surprisingly contentious where “Hey Diddle Diddle” originated.  Easy enough to place the ontological origin, but much, much more challenging to decipher its meaning.  Some think it’s a reference to constellations; others suggest it’s a bastardization of ancient Greek writings; and still others think it refers to cultish religious chants._

_One way or another, it’s stuck in my goddamn head._

159:20:07.

 

_Tell me a story, Iris._

_Tell me about your day, your week, your month, your year._

_God I hope it hasn’t been a year._

172:10:15.

 

_Someone plays the Star Wars theme, very loudly, and I’d cry if I could._

_Another someone shouts at the first someone to turn it_ down _, but it’s festive and maybe the happiest this place has seemed in centuries._

_Will people still remember Star Wars in fifty, a hundred, five hundred years?_

172:20:34.

 

 _Will_ I?

 

198:03:56.

 

_I bribed Iris to watch all six movies with me._

_If the rumors are true, there’s a seventh in the works._

_I hope Star Wars guy plays it, full volume, for days._

200:12:30.

 

_It’s getting hard to hear people._

_At first I think my ears are out of practice when Iris talks to me for the first time in God-only-knows how long.  Her voice is fuzzy and distant, bubbling with excitement but also a bit sober, too, because I am a reminder of something gone.  I can’t hear you, I tell her, over and over, as tears dissolve unshed on my face.  I can’t hear you._

_I really, really don’t want to lose my hearing, too._

204:15:04.

 

_Helen Keller was deaf and blind from birth._

_How she learned to talk to our cold, dark world amazes me.  Without my eyes and ears, I feel a paralyzing stillness, like reality has vanished from underneath me._

_I take it back.  I’m not ready to die yet._

 

215:03:42.

 

_I’m in love with you, Iris, and I have been since we were kids.  I was in love with you before I knew what the word ‘love’ meant._

_I just never worked up the courage to tell you._

220:13:09.

 

_Please, please give me the opportunity to try again._

 

234:14:12.

 

_“Heartbreakers gonna break-break-break-break-break and the dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah baby I’m just gonna dum-dum-dum-dum-dum, shake it off, shake it off!”_

_I love this guy._

238:19:09.

 

_Music gives me a way of passing time.  I wish we lived to the sound of music._

_Iris loves that movie.  We’d watch it on the couch together and I would always, without fail, fall asleep._

_“I’d watch it with you now,” I want to tell her, but she hasn’t been here in a while._

 

241:02:48.

 

_Where are you, Iris West?_

249:18:29.

 

_Where am I?_

255:12:04.

 

_He’s still playing music.  I can’t hear it anymore._

260:03:29.

 

_The reaper visits me._

_I know it because I can_ feel _it, and the hairs on my arms rise of their own accord, and it is the first and only sign of life to touch me since I feel asleep a thousand years ago._

_I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can feel him.  A hand hovers over my heart.  For a moment, I think he’ll rip it out._

_Then he’s gone._

_I don’t rest easy for a while._

269:22:59.

 

_Humans can survive almost three weeks without food._

_The idea of food is still just as tasty as I remember.  I guess it takes more than death to wash out the memory of flavors._

274:02:08.

 

_It’s very late, and I can’t see her, or hear her, or feel her presence, but when her hand brushes mine, I feel the spark._

 

275:00:02.

 

_Thunder growls at the back of my consciousness, insisting one-word, wake-up, over and over.  Wake-up, wake-up, wake-up._

278:13:19.

 

 _Let there be **light,** shallow shadows, people, People?  Sound, sensation, ow, YES, deep breath_, _loud_ , can’t-read-my-can’t-read-my-no-he-can’t-read-my-poker-face

 

I rise from the dead with a gasp.  “Where am I?”

 

000:00:23.

 

I hug Iris for the first time in 278 days.

 

It’s better than I remembered.

 


End file.
